BBC News for iPhone

The latest news from the BBC delivered to your iPhone

The official BBC News iPhone app delivers the latest stories from around the World directly to your iPhone. The app brings together up-to-the minute reports from BBC News in a compact and easy-to-access user interface.The main page of the BBC News...View full description

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Softonic review

By James Thornton

Very good

8

The official BBC News iPhone app delivers the latest stories from around the World directly to your iPhone. The app brings together up-to-the minute reports from BBC News in a compact and easy-to-access user interface.

The main page of the BBC News app lists the top stories, sectioned by category (e.g. technology, sport, business, etc.), region and language. These categories can be customized by you. On the main page the headlines and preview images can be flicked through by sliding your finger. A news ticker at the top keeps you updated with the latest breaking story.

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Tap on a headline and the story will open in a new page. You can then thumb through all stories in that category by sliding left and right. Unfortunately, you aren't able to view stories at full screen, although you can adjust the text size. Stories can be shared very easily via Facebook or Twitter with the click of a button.

Quality content

The quality and the quantity of the content on the BBC News app is second to none. Stories are generally well informed and easy to read. Besides written news stories, you can access in-depth features behind the news, as well as audio and video content (some territorial restrictions apply here).

The BBC News app includes access to live radio from the corporation's World Service, which plays in the background of the app. Or at least, that's the theory. During our tests, the radio feature crashed a few times without any apparent reason.

In fact, that's not the only bug in the BBC News app. Switching to landscape mode sometimes doesn't work, leaving you staring at just a blank screen. On more than one occasion the entire BBC News app crashed on us inexplicably, too.

These glitches aside, the BBC News iPhone app offers a compact and comfortable way to enjoy the latest news on the move.

Videos no longer play by accident if you swipe on them
Video player now ignores mute switch (standard video player behaviour)
App refreshes when it returns from background
Scroll to top of story by tapping on clock
Carousels reset to the start on app refresh
Audio continues to play in background when phone goes to sleep

Changes

Videos no longer play by accident if you swipe on them
Video player now ignores mute switch (standard video player behaviour)
App refreshes when it returns from background
Scroll to top of story by tapping on clock
Carousels reset to the start on app refresh
Audio continues to play in background when phone goes to sleep